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Lincoln, The American 



by 



FRANK O. LOWDEN 



Governor of Illinois 



Boston, Mass. 



February 12, 1919 



[Printed by authority of the State of Illinois.] 






^fiSSp: 



Springfield, III. 

Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers 

19 19 

15793— 1M 






of k>. 
2« 1919 



Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois delivered the following 

address before the Middlesex Club at the Hotel Somerset 

in Boston, Mass.. Wednesday evening February 

12, 1919: 

Principles rather than policies appealed to Abraham Lincoln. All 
great questions seemed to him to involve some moral quality. It was his 
habit, therefore, to resolve them into their simple fundamentals. It 
thus happens that many of his words are as apt and forceful to-day as 
when they were first spoken by him. Your Club has recognized this 
fact and has made "Lincoln, the American," the theme of the evening. 
In harmony with this thought, I shall try to put before you some of 
the things for which Lincoln stood, which directly apply, as it seems 
to me, to the grave problems with which we and all the world with us 
are now confronted. 

A hundred and ten years ago to-day, two men were born. Both have 
been dust for many years. Yet each played a large part in the Great 
World War that we hope has reached its close. These men were Charles 
Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Darwin devoted his life to the study of 
material things. In that world in which he lived he found heredity and 
environment to be the controlling facts. Out of his study came the 
doctrine of the survival of the,, fittest. The savants of Germany made 
that doctrine the corner-stone of a new philosophy which they called 
Kultur. 

According to Kultur, the world belonged to the strong and to the 
strong alone. Might was right, and the world was in the relentless grip 
of physical force. Justice, gentleness, righteousness were words 
invented by the weak to protect themselves against the strong. To pity 
a foe was weakness; to spare him was a crime. Kultur was a denial of 
the moral law; was a blind faith in the power of the laws of life which 
Darwin had declared. 

On the same day, in a cabin in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln was 
born. If heredity and environment had been all there was in human 
life, we never should have heard his name. While Darwin delved in 
rocks to find vanished forms of life, Lincoln studied men. He learned 
to know men. By them his sympathies were quickened; the moral 
depths of his being were stirred ; the right and wrong of human conduct 
engaged his deepest thought. Just as the laws of physical being un- 
folded under the eye of the great scientist, so the laws of the moral 
universe disclosed themselves to the great man. It was said that Darwin 



could lake a single bone of some extinct and unknown, animal and 
reconstruct thai animal perfectly. Lincoln at the same time could take 
a single wrong to society and reconstruct society, to the everlasting 
benefit of all. Lincoln never read The Origin of Species, but he knew 
that, under the moral law, an injury l> nor race to an inferior 

reacted upon itself. He said — "This is a world of compensation and 
he who would be qo slave must consent to have no slave. And those 
who deny freedom to others deserve it nor for themselves and under a 
just God cannot long retain it/' Unconsciously, Lincoln became the 
interpreter of the moral laws of society, just as Darwin became the inter- 
preter of the physical laws of life. Therefore, to Lincoln all men had 
the inalienable right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 
Lincoln was as much at home amidst the play of moral and spiritual 
as was Darwin in the realm of mere matter. It was this moral 
grandeur to which Lincoln attained that made him the wisest of all 
men. For, after all, wisdom is largely a product of character. Men 
may be intellectually brilliant, indeed brilliant beyond compare, and 
yet be utterly lacking in wisdom. Where other men had views, Lincoln 
had convictions. Convictions come from the heart and not from the 
brain. And so if there comes a question of human liberty, of human 
rights, one may turn to Lincoln for an answer without inquiring as to 

articular year in which he wrote. There is a perfect harmony 
running through all his utterances. 

it is not strange thai as Kulhir was partially founded upon the 
doctrine of Darwin, so the Allies Pound their chief inspiration in the 
Abraham Lincoln. For this great contest was a war between the 
materia] forces of the world, upon the one hand, and the spiritual forces 
on the other. Where the Central Empires found comforl in The Origin 
icies, the state-men of England and France, and of Italy and the 
United States read the Gettysburg speech and the Second Inaugural, 
and so they renewed their faith and refreshed their courage. 

Darwin and Lincoln! Darwin announcing the survival of the 
strong! Lincoln declaring that when being mounted up to man. love 
also came into the universe to shield the weak! Lincoln insisting that 
when the laws of the physical universe and of the moral universe clash. 
those of the moral universe will prevail ! Thank God, our soldiers, on a 
score of immortal battlefields in the last two years, have proven that 
Lincoln was right. The victory which we celebrate is the victory of 
spiritual to er the things of earth. 

Lincoln truly served mankind becau ived mankind. Genuine 

service must always spring from the promptings of the heart, and is 
a product of the will alone. It was your own poet Lowell who 
said : 



\ "How beautiful to sec 

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed. 
Who hived his charge, but never loved to Lead." 

And so he couldn't help giving his tenderest though! to the working 
man. Tie eared for him because he eared for all men. AH are familiar 
with Ids significanl saying thai the Lord loves plain people because He 
made so many of them. 

With reference to the age-old question of labor and capital, he 
declared — "Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is 
only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor "had no! 
first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the 
highesl consideration." This is but another way of saying that si 
should chiefly concern itself with the lot in life of the average man. 
And this is but saying, in another form, that Lincoln was a lover of 
humanity. The Declaration of Independence, to which, again and a 
he turned in his thinking, included not only the right To life and liberty. 
but the right to the pursuit of happiness as well. And it is interesting 

be that though Lincoln emphasized the right to liberty- -for s : . 

the dominant issue at the time — he never referred to the Declara- 
tion, so far as 1 can find, without coupling with the right to liberty, the 
to the pursuit of happiness. Life means much; liberty mean- 
much; but both fail unless life can be lived and liberty enjoyed under 
conditions of well-being. Any form of government is but a means to 
an end, and that end is the happiness of the individual. I am sure thai 
in our almost a century and a half of existence, since that great day of 
Independence, more men have lived happy lives in our country and 
under our form of government than in any other in all the history of 
the world. 

But the happiness and well-being of the average man and woman 
must be steadily advanced if our institutions are to endure. The econo- 
mists may explain, the statesmen may excuse our failure to accomplish 
this, but the fact remains that our civilization will fail if the well-being 
o!' the men and women and children of America shall not continu 
improve. 

This cannot be, however, in my opinion, if we destroy private initia- 
tive in industry. For every invention, for every improved process made 
under the stimulus of private initiative, though the inventor may profit, 
society profits immeasurably more. A steadily reducing amount of 
human labor is all the time required to produce the necessities of life. 
It' we shall abandon the ancient landmarks and substitute for private 
initiative and private industry a socialistic state, the progress of man- 
kind will be arrested and retrogression will set in. Again Lincoln 
speaks to us: it is a message for to-day — '•The legitimate object of gov- 



eminent is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have 
done but cannot do at all or cannot so well do for themselves in their 
separate and individual capacities. In all that the people can indi- 
vidually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere." 
He also warns us — "let not him who is houseless pull down the house of 
another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by 
example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built." 

Lincoln was above all a great American. Indeed, it was that same 
poet of yours, whom I have already quoted, who said of him — "new birth 
of our new soil, the first American." 

All his life he hated slavery, but he loved his country more. He 
accepted battle not to free the slave but to save the Union. With sad 
heart, but with steadfast courage, he faced the greatest war the world 
had ever seen to keep the flag of his country — and not of the world — 
flying in the sky. 

There are those who believe they can see somewhere high in the 
sky a shadowy banner, upon which is written the word "internation- 
alism." To some this far-away flag seems white and to others red. They 
believe that this flag is to supersede the flag of all the nations of the 
earth. That time may come, but it will come only Avhen men shall 
cease to love their own, when they shall care for others' families equally 
with their own. In the meantime we can serve humanity best by serving 
our own country first. 

Lincoln said: "I do not mean to say that this general government 
is charged with the duty of redressing or preventing all the wrongs in 
the world; but I do think that it is charged with preventing and re- 
dressing all wrongs which arc wrongs to itself." These words might 
indicate that Lincoln was not interested in humanity beyond our own 
borders. This is not so. All through his writings runs the thought that 
our cause was the cause of humanity. In his speech at Gettysburg, he 
did not say — "Let us highly resolve that these dead shall not have died 
in vain; that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, 
and that government of the people, by the people, for' the people shall 
i ml perish" from the United States, but "from the earth." His vision 
circled all the globe. His great heart was beating in sympathy with 
mankind everywhere. But he knew that the surest way to help the 
world was to cherish our priceless heritage at home. He knew that if 
we could preserve intact the liberties and institutions which we called 
our own, that was the greatest service we could render to mankind. 

Mow well he wrought I doubt if even he himself could fully under- 
hand. The condition of mankind the world over has been constantly 
improving, due to our influence and our example. The American Ee- 
public has been an inspiration to the lovers of liberty everywhere. It is 






the last and best hope of the world and he who would imperil its future 
by excess of love for other peoples and other lands is recreant not only 
to his country, but to mankind everywhere. The Eepublic, during its 
almost a century and a half of existence, has had a mighty influence 
throughout the world. Its power has come from its success as a self- 
governing nation. Our influence has run around the globe because we 
have contented ourselves with being an exemplar to, rather than a ruler 
of mankind. 

Lincoln did preserve the Union and free the slaves. That Nation 
which he saved had grown so powerful in a little more than fifty years 
that it was able, in the supreme crisis of civilization, to turn the tide 
of the great world conflict. And as he prayed, so now we may have faith 
to believe that "government of the people, by the people, for the people 
shall not perish from the earth." 



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